Railroad Tycoon 3 has a few known compatibility issues with Windows 7, 8 and 10. The most common one that causes a startup crash is the “Hardward T&L” setting that is enabled by default. To disable it you’ll have to overwrite your config file (just be sure not to re-enable it in your game settings or you’ll have to do this again).

Overwrite the engine.cfg with the downloaded version. The original engine.cfg is located in:Railroad Tycoon 3\Data\Configuration
If you installed the game through steam you can find this file in the following directory:steam\steamapps\common\Railroad Tycoon 3\Data\Configuration

Restart the game

If you’ve followed the above steps and are still having issues with the Railroad Tycoon 3 startup crash on Windows 10, please post in the comments below. To increase your chances of a solution being found include as much detail as possible (which version of the game you’re running, what operating system you have, what video card you have and steps to reproduce the issue). Screenshots are also very useful!